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Do you realize that most of those "made-up words" in Anathem were just lightly mangled Latin? I'm due for a reread of the Baroque Cycle before too long, so I w
by maw 16y ago
Do you realize that most of those "made-up words" in Anathem were just lightly mangled Latin?
I'm due for a reread of the Baroque Cycle before too long, so I won't pass judgement on it here, but I'd happily welcome another Anathem.
- oihuyjfrgtdfghj 16y agoSo not even original made-up words!
- gwern 16y ago> Do you realize that most of those "made-up words" in Anathem were just lightly mangled Latin? It still felt cheap. Give me another book like Gene Wolfe's _Book of the New Sun_ where all the made-up words were English words! (And obviously often Latin-derived.)
- aaronbrethorst 16y agoIt had a purpose in the context of the novel. Why did it strike you as being cheap?
- gwern 16y agoMost of them struck me as being poor riddles; 'here's this strange quasi-English quasi-Latin word which is usually a portmanteau; try to figure out from context what it means and how I derived it!' They wound up irritating me like the meaningless religious allusions and terms in _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ (and many other anime) irritate me. Maybe there was a purpose in the novel's context beyond being a strange bit of parallel-worlds gimcrackery. I must've missed it.